Need to compare equal files differing by date/time only

[JackS]

There is a lot of clutter when viewing folders where the files only differ on date/time (can happen), and it would be good to filter those out, or at least mark as equal.

BC2.5 requires you visit the file(s) before it then considers them equal but that is time consuming.

[Aaron]

You can go to the:
BC2: Session menu -> Comparison Control
BC3: Session menu -> Session Settings

Comparison tab, and change the default comparison used per session (or set the default for future sessions). To match what you see via the Text Compare, change to a Content Comparison>Rules-based.

This will take longer to run, because it will visit each file and scan their contents. Does this help?

[Michael Bulgrien]

Jack, try the settings that Scooter's Tim suggested for me to try:

In build 443 we've tinkered with the comparison criteria settings. I am interested in hearing if this combination would work for your typical source projects:

• [ ] Automatically scan subfolders
• [ ] Expand subfolders when loading session
• [x] Compare file size
• [x] Compare timestamps
• [x] Compare contents
• ( ) CRC comparison
• (x) Binary comparison
• ( ) Rules-based comparison
• [x] Skip if quick tests indicate files are the same
• [x] Override quick test results

The full post is here. Note that the Binary comparison will identify files that are the same even if the date/time stamp differs.

As Aaron indicated, if you actually want BC3 to compare the files and ignore unimportant changes, you could use the Rules-based comparison instead of the Binary comparison, but the scan will take longer run.